The One State Future Now Looks More Likely

The shape of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been clarifying itself over the past few days. On one hand, the head of the Palestine Authority has gone to the United Nations and made his case for a two state solution without the slightest ambiguity, reiterated his recognition of the permanence of Israel, asking in return for the recognition of a Palestine based on the land of 22 percent of the UN mandate, the territories Israel occupied in 1967. The UN General Assembly passed this resolution by overwhelming numbers. A few days later, we saw Israel’s response–the announcement that it plans to build in the “E1” area, east of Jerusalem, so that there would be no possible contiguous Palestinian state, no way residents of Bethlehem, East Jerusalem, and Ramallah could be linked. The West Bank would be effectively split in half by Israeli settlements. In effect, the Palestinians affirmed their bid for two states, and Israel said no, we will keep all the land for ourselves.

That evening Hillary Clinton opened up her 2016 presidential campaign by paying homage to Israel and the Israel lobby, and giving a doting speech to the Saban center at Brookings (its patron, Haim Saban describes himself as a one issue guy whose issue is Israel). Of course, she sat next to Saban. Knowing full well that it is the president’s policy — as it has been that of every previous American president — to oppose Israeli settlement building and to favor a two state solution based on the 1967 borders, she did include one murky line in her speech — ” in light of today’s announcement” (about E1?) “these activities [settlement building?] set back the cause of a negotiated peace.” But Hillary, at this critical moment, couldn’t even bring herself to mouth the word “settlement”, so beholden is she to the Israel lobby.

However imperfect, the two state solution has always seemed demonstrably better than the alternatives. Are two peoples who clearly hate one another — one whose land was taken away by the other — to share peaceably the same political space? It is not impossible, but it hardly seems the most expedient solution. Or is Israel to attempt — as its far right has long demanded — to “finish the job” started in 1948 and ethically cleanse the remaining Palestinians from Greater Israel. That probably is impossible — there are millions of Palestinians; and any attempt at further ethnic cleansing would ensure that Israel would go down in history as irredeemably morally tainted. Nor, of course, would Israel’s vulnerability to rocket fire be even slightly attenuated by such actions.

Or does Israel simply contemplate a continuation of the status quo — the West Bank Palestinians are confined to their towns, their right to trade and to travel (both within the West Bank and abroad) controlled by Israel, as is their water and electricity. Those who protest will face midnight arrests and detention without trial. I’ve read scenarios like this on right-wing Zionist blogs — the writers often think that Palestinian advocacy in the West is a passing fad which will soon whither away, leaving Israel with a free hand on the West Bank, while Israel will continue to benefit from favorable trade relations with Europe and massive subsidy from the United States. I believe this is the Israeli gameplan, and that it is as far-fetched as the other scenarios. As the UN vote demonstrated, Israel’s image in Europe is far worse than it is in the United States — as European governments pay far more attention to the measures Israel takes to render a two-state solution impossible. And sentiments of guilt or responsibility for the Holocaust, long assumed by Israel to keep European diplomacy quiescent, have lost their potency.

What does the future hold? While the two state solution is not yet off the table, no one with actual power is actually pushing for it. And once settlements are built in E1, two states will be over. At that point, the Palestinian Authority, unable to justify its existence in other than Quisling terms, should and probably will disband. And what former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert described as “a South Africa style struggle for equal voting rights” will commence. (Olmert, by the way, said Israel should embrace the Palestinian bid for observer state status.)

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12 Responses to The One State Future Now Looks More Likely

The question is, even IF that struggle is conducted on largely non-violent terms and we see video of Israeli troops firing on protesting Palestinians who aren’t even throwing rocks, let alone firing guns or rockets, will the acquiescence of the U.S. public to its government’s blank check support for Israel erode or not, and if the former, at what rate? I have to say that I am not optimistic, especially given the relative lack of advantages that a U.S. Palestinian solidarity movement would have compared to the old anti-apartied movement, especially the size and relative “foreign-ness” of the Arab-American community compared to the African-American one.

It’s hard to get your head around this one-state idea, particularly the ramifications it would have. A year ago I thought it was just another test run of the Isreali extremists. Now Abbass is threatening it. There would be a huge immediate impact for the Israelis: the cost and burden of direct administration and policing of the entire West Bank. And the so-called struggle for democratic rights that so many glibly talk about is far-fetched indeed. There is a growing non-violent civil-rights movement in the West Bank, but that grew within the national struggle of the Palestinian people for a state. The South African struggle was both violent and non-violent throughout its history against Apartheid. Just can’t imagine the Palestinian people themselves taking kindly to their own leaders’ downgrading their national claim to ‘democratic civil rights’ within Israel. Then again, Abbass’ strategy of putting all eggs into UN basket implies a decade or two of legal strategy against Israel. Guess everything stays the same.

And sentiments of guilt or responsibility for the Holocaust, long assumed by Israel to keep European diplomacy quiescent, have lost their potency

Bully for them, it’s about darn time. Too many (mostly white) gentile Americans are also inhibited by misguided, undeserved Holocaust guilt. For all the justified discourse surrounding the Zionist Lobby and its power in the US, the reality that so many of the 98 percent of Americans who are not Jewish have been brainwashed into believing that the Holocaust (which, according to propaganda, the US allegedly failed to prevent, or whose refugees the US refused to take in allegedly because of white Christian anti-semitism) justifies American support of Israel is one the major pillars — if not the major pillar — upholding our self-injuring policies in the Near East.

There was a time when Israel was tiny, embattled, the remnants of a people riven by the Holocaust and gathered up in a new homeland, oppressed on all sides by enemies.

That time ended when my father was a boy. By now, the time when Israel was a weak underdog is passed. The last time Israel was seriously challenged was long before I was born — the rockets fired from the West Bank are wrong, but some home-made rockets are not going to seriously endanger the stability of the state. The Holocaust was an enormous crime, one of the greatest in history… but it happened nearly seventy years ago. Such survivors as are still around are very, very old men and women.

For people of my generation, and indeed, the one immediately before mine, Israel has always been the regional superpower, with the strongest economy, best military, and the only nuclear weapons.

I rather envision that support for the Palestinians is only going to grow. They look like the underdogs now.

Well, let’s see if this settlement actually gets built, or if this is just a lashing out. But your larger concerns about the “South Africanization” of the situation, and the lack of momentum toward a two-state solution, obviously stand.

It has gotten to the point that leaders support the two state solution because of the ramifications one state solutions are a bit unsettling. Frankly, I almost agree with Goldberg that the Palenstine people should just get all MLK on the Israel. Start by quoting Gandhi and MLK in speeches and follow restaurant sit-ins and bus boycotts. (Now that poor Palentine people have to take different buses than the average Israel person seems like an inopportune time.) Nothing would drive the US liberals from partial support of Israel than reminding them of the civil rights gains of the 1960s and segregation. The civil rights movement is what young liberals truly hold dear.

However, in the long run the Palenstine people would have to accept that they are part of the Israeli people.

FYI, the one-state solution has been a popular idea on the revolutionary left, the thinking being that the Israeli and Palestininian working class would ultimately come together based on class interests. I know this may seem far-fetched at the moment, but as Israel becomes more of a “neo-liberal” paradise where the working class become the working poor, who knows. Stranger things have happened.

This is precisely why this support may decline in the West. Supporting underdog, because of it being an underdog, is a very bad criteria in foreign relations of any country and this support eventually dissipates. Plus, for Europe some other dynamics is in play as of lately (15-20 years)–islamization. In this respect, Israel masterfully inserted herself into this problem and framed it, not without success or some merit, in terms of civilizational struggle at the heart of which is Israel herself. One may argue, as pointed out before, about the merits of such an approach or if there is a case for Israel at all, but the more Europeans will taste the fruits of multi-culti (with Islam being at the heart of it) the more dynamics of attitudes towards Israel and Palestinians will change.